Week full of turmoil

Just ahead of the club’s annual meeting our team slipped deep into relegation battle. Of course you can come back fro Nuremberg without any points in hand, but how Borussia Dortmund performed was more than pathetic and so FCN’s three-pointer was absolutely deserved.


As you could read from our match report our team performed like they already accepted relegation. There was no fight, no will, and technical deficits. No tactics were visible and Doll seemed clueless how to turn things around. Even before the match there were critical voices, stating that Thomas Doll might not be the right coach to bring BVB back on track, after the match even the few people supporting Doll had next to no arguments.
In consequence of the bad results on the pitch our officials surely weren’t that happy to face the club members last Monday. And indeed the club meeting started with angry members and shouts towards president Dr. Rauball and CEO Watzke. But when it came to electing the president of Borussia Dortmund most of the turmoil already turned silent. And so it was no wonder that Dr. Rauball was re-elected with an overwhelming result of more than 99%. There were also some discussions between our officials and the more than 900 members concerning the bad results of our team and Michael Zorc’s work. Watzke absolutely defended Zorc and his transfers and said that most of Zorc’s work is not visible to people outside the club. And so in the end the meeting ended more or less in harmony.

Then there was still the meeting of our shareholders on Tuesday. As the company had a record profit of more than 10 million Euro last season, some shareholders even asked for a dividend. But Watzke, and most of the rest, realized that Borussia Dortmund is still not that vital, that it could splash out money. According to Watzke it will take another 3 to 4 years until shareholders can participate. And it surely underlined his statements that Borussia had a first quarter loss of 1.9 million Euro. Though the board is confident to end the season with a small plus that still shows that our budgets are tight.
Maybe one reason why the club member meeting on Monday was not as emotion-loaded as expected, was the fact that Borussia Dortmund could announce an important contract extension. Left midfielder and home-grown boy Florian Kringe signed a new 4y-contract expiring in 2011. As clubs like Werder Bremen and VfL Wolfsburg were in chase of the 25y old it seemed to be a difficult task to make him stay. And even if you have all of Zorc’s transfer blunders in mind, it was a great deal to persuade Kringe to stay at Westfalenstadion.
We have to play away at the reigning champions. Normally that is enough said, but having a deeper look offers some interesting details. Stuttgart started into the season with absolute horrible matches and results. They were early stuck in the lower half of the table. But they got their things together some weeks ago and started a furious winning streak. They even had their first three-pointer in Champions League on Tuesday. In a hard fight they beat Glasgow Rangers 3-2. On the other hand, BVB is everything else but on a lucky strike. We saw pathetic performances over and over. Normally we will be trashed – full stop. But then again, when nobody expected something from our blackyellow boys, they sometimes surprised.

As Brzenska and Klimowicz are suspended and as Wörns, Frei and Degen are injured, Thomas Doll has not that many options especially in defence. Kruska or Akgün will probably start as right-back accompanying Kovac and Amedick in centre defence. Kuba on the right and Kringe on the left are backed by Tinga and Kehl as holding midfielders. Up front Petric will be supported by either Valdez or young talent Nöthe.

VfB Stuttgart: Schäfer - Tasci, Meira, Delpierre, Magnin - Pardo - Hilbert, Hitzlsperger - Khedira - Marica, Cacau

Borussia Dortmund: Weidenfeller - Akgün (Kruska), Amedick, Kovac, Dede - Kuba (Federico), Kehl, Tinga, Kringe - Valdez (Nöthe), Petric

Referee: Dr. Felix Brych

Venue, Kick-off: Gottlieb-Daimler-Stadion - December 1st, 3.30pm CET

Geschrieben von jonam